Why do modern Bible translations leave out verses?

If you've spent much time comparing Bible translations, you've noticed that some verses, or portions of verses, have been moved from the main text into a footnote. The footnotes usually say that the verse does not appear in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts.

Why are these verses questioned by scholars? Are they attempting to achieve some dark objective which results in casting doubt upon the inspiration of the Bible? The quick answer is that nothing sinister is going on.

Rather than removing verses, scholars have valid reasons to believe that some verses should have never been in the Bible to begin with. Many people have the mistaken impression that in the original languages the Bible is a single document.

In reality, scholars have thousands of manuscripts that were all copied at different times and in different places. The ancient scribes were fanatical about accurately replicating the documents, but they made mistakes sometimes.

Textual criticism is a discipline that seeks to identify copying mistakes in an effort to determine what the original Bible documents said. The process involves comparing thousands of manuscripts with each other and drawing conclusions about the variant readings.

The end result of this work is a document used as a textual base for translating into other languages. The King James translators relied upon a Greek text which was compiled by a man named Erasmus. Erasmus' textual base eventually became known as the Textus Receptus.

By the late 1800s, more manuscripts had been discovered that were older and more reliable than any Erasmus had access to. They were used to compile a revised textual base that came to be known as the Critical Text.

Consider these variant readings from Acts chapter 20 verse 7 from the Textus Receptus and the Critical Text. In this instance, the Critical Text uses the word WE and the Textus Receptus uses THE DISCIPLES.

Which reading was more likely the one the author of the Book of Acts wrote in his original document? In this particular example, modern scholarship leans in favor of the word WE. Textual criticism tries to determine which reading is more probable when such a discrepancy arises.

With this in mind, perhaps we should consider the question the other way around. Instead of asking, are verses missing? Perhaps we should be asking, were verses added? It is important to keep in mind that even though there are textual variations in the Bible manuscripts, they are of minor significance.

None of the discrepancies affect the Bible's crucial teachings. Even if the so-called missing verses were completely removed, the Bible's message would not be altered at all.